


Candlelit Dinner

by Fairfaxleasee



Series: Alistair/Amelia [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cute, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fade to Black, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29205066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: Alistair decides he's had enough work for one day and sets about finding his fiancée so they can have dinner.
Relationships: Alistair (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Alistair/Amelia [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141979
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Candlelit Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @blondetexan and @xqueen0fhellx for betaing
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at https://fairfaxleasee.tumblr.com/

Alistair glanced around a corner in the Denerim palace. He felt slightly ridiculous doing it - he was going to be king in a few weeks (although he didn’t like thinking too hard about that for very long), he shouldn’t  _ have _ to be sneaking around. Who was Eamon to tell him he had to stay in his office and do  _ work _ and  _ learn _ things? It hadn’t been so bad when Amelia was the one teaching him. Being locked in the stupid room for hours with her had been quite entertaining, but somehow Eamon had gotten the idea Alistair was focusing on all the wrong things when Amelia was around. May have had something to do with the day Eamon had asked him what he’d learned and he responded ‘She’s ticklish.’

So now he was stuck in the blighted office all day, with no one  _ nearly  _ as interesting as his betrothed (now  _ that _ was something much more fun to think about than the whole ‘king’ thing) while she spent all her time in the dusty, boring old archives! And she’d  _ promised _ she’d come out tonight and they’d have dinner together. Well, technically she’d promised she’d come out and they’d have dinner if he got all his work done before then, but he’d gotten most of it done. He had the rest stuffed in a pocket, he’d be able to finish it before dinner. Probably. 

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Alistair turned towards the exasperated voice to see Avalonne, Amelia’s elven lady-in-waiting. She was looking much less undead than when they’d found her in the dungeons, but hadn’t quite lost her leeriness of human noblemen (which Alistair kept having to remind himself that he was). Although judging by her tone Avalonne was less leery of him and more slightly disappointed in him. Alistair could handle ‘slightly disappointed.’

“Oh! Avalonne! Hi. I was… um. Looking. Trying to watch out for… uh… assassins that might be lurking around.”

Avalonne crossed her arms. “The assassin’s not due back here til week’s end, and the only person I’ve ever seen lurking around here is you.”

Alistair leaned against the wall and hoped he looked nonchalant. “So, how  _ is _ Zevran by the way? Seems like I hardly ever see him anymore.”

“You don’t care how Zevran’s doing. You just don’t want to tell me what you’re doing.”

“How do  _ you _ know I don’t care how Zevran’s doing. I’ve known him longer than you, you know. We go all the way back to when he tried to kill me.”

“Is it really that hard to just say, ‘Hi Avalonne. I’m looking for Amelia because I’ve decided I don’t actually want to do my work anymore, despite the fact that I’m going to be king in a few weeks, and still have no idea what I’m doing’?”

“Ha, they could give me a few  _ years _ and I’d still have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Yes, well you said it; I didn’t.”

They stood in silence for a few minutes before Alistair couldn’t take it anymore and spoke up. “...you’re actually going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

She smiled at him. It wasn’t at  _ all _ like the nice smiles Amelia had for him. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

He slumped his shoulders, “Hi, Avalonne. I’m looking for Amelia because she’s the only person around here who’s actually nice to me, and I’ve decided I don’t want to do my work anymore, despite the fact that it looks like they’re going to go through with the stupid plan to make me king in a few weeks - even though I will never have any idea what I’m doing.”

She shook her head a bit, “She’s in the archives, but you knew that. What you  _ didn’t _ know, and you didn’t hear from me, is that Eamon went back to his estate to have dinner with Isolde and we don’t expect him back here for a few hours.” Alistair straightened up again at the news. “But you know she’s going to expect you to have actually  _ done _ your work if you’re going down to see her.”

“I’ve done… enough of it.”

“This entire kingdom would be in  _ so _ much trouble if it weren’t for her…”

“I know! Me, being in charge, by  _ myself _ ? Terrifying thought, isn’t it?” Alistair started heading towards the archives much more quickly now that he didn’t have to worry about running into anyone who might order him back to his office.

He got to the archives and pulled open the door. He didn’t care for them very much; they were stuffy and dark and cold, and Amelia might have explained to him several times that there were very good reasons for all three of those things, but he still didn’t care for them. Also these particular archives were a maze of passages and he wasn’t sure where anything was once the massive table in the area without shelves just inside the door was out of sight. There were two large candelabras that were illuminating the area immediately around the table, but the light from them didn’t extend very far down any of the passages that lead back into the archives proper. He figured that Amelia would have had to take  _ something _ to light her way in the labyrinth of tomes and records, but she was either far enough away or around enough corners that he couldn’t see any trace of her.

He could take a candle of his own and try to find her back there, but given the choice between standing out here and calling for her to come to him and getting lost down a dead end that somehow appeared in his path and calling for her to rescue him he decided on the former. “Amelia!” he called down a passage at random. No answer. He tried a different passage slightly louder, “AMELIA!”

“Yes, Alistair, I heard you!” He couldn’t quite tell where her voice was coming from. “You didn’t try to come in after me again, did you?” She didn’t sound too happy about that idea.

“What would you do if I said yes?”

“After what happened last time?” (He may have gotten slightly tired of waiting for her to find him and tried to move one of the shelves and set off a bit of an avalanche when he thought he heard her on the other side of it.) “I’d be  _ very _ cross with you and leave to have dinner.”

“You’d leave me in here all by myself with all the papers just waiting to swoop down on me?”

“They won’t stoop down on you if you don’t provoke them. Now can you still see the table or not?” She sounded worried now.

“Yes, love. I haven’t gone anywhere.”

He heard her footsteps behind him and turned around. “ _ Don’t _ scare me like that! You know I can’t find anything back there, including you when you come looking for me.”

She was holding a heavy copper lantern. He took it from her and set it down on the table. “Still no luck finding an inventory?”

She shook her head, “No. And I’m honestly starting to think that’s because there’s not one. Nothing makes sense back there. Everything’s all mixed around; there’s almost no organizational structure whatsoever, time or subject.”

“Could something have happened during the occupation?”

“Well, it obviously could have, but I frankly kind of doubt it since the records from the occupation are the only ones I can make any sort of sense of. Granted, they mostly talk about what got sent to Val Royeaux, but at least I understand them. And I still can’t quite believe Anora’s records are just as bad as the rest of them. I know she’s not an archivist but she’s usually very particular about things being in their proper place.”

“Do you think she…” Alistair stopped when he noticed Amelia’s face. He’d been enjoying watching her in the flickering candlelight; even with Amelia’s lantern added to the candelabras near the table, the entryway to the archives was still mostly in darkness and the light made her hair shine bronze and had picked up colors in her hazel green eyes that he’d never appreciated before, but what he noticed now were the tears shining around her eyes. “I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through her hair and leaned over to kiss her temple. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s… you’re right. Sabotaging things by deliberately mis-ordering them so no one else could easily put them back together sounds like  _ exactly _ the sort of thing she’d do. I don’t think she’d have had time to do it to all the records, but it’s almost definitely what she did to hers.”

Alistair couldn’t argue that sabotage sounded like the exact sort of thing the woman who’d tried to sell him out to Loghain, twice, to keep the crown on her own head would do. He may not care for Amelia’s sister, or father, at all, but they were still her family and she was having enough trouble dealing with the fallout from siding with him at the Landsmeet rather than them. Her father, at least, seemed to have almost expected it. Ever since he survived the Joining and the Archdemon, Loghain had been trying to fix his relationship with the daughter he’d spent almost a decade pushing away. And while Alistair didn’t like Loghain or the idea of Loghain being his father-in-law any more than Loghain liked Alistair or the idea of Alistair being his son-in-law, Amelia just wanted her father back. And despite the fact that Alistair wished he were someone,  _ anyone _ else, he wasn’t going to even attempt to take that away from her. Anora, on the other hand, was furious with both Amelia and their father (and likely Alistair too he supposed, but he couldn’t say he cared about that; it wasn’t like  _ she _ came to visit Amelia at least once a month and he’d have to sit there pretending not to hate her) and had been very vocal about the idea that Amelia had somehow been behind the ‘coup’ at the Landsmeet so she could be queen, rather than Anora.

“Come, love.” He slid his hand behind her back and tilted his head to the door, “You promised you’d have dinner with me, remember?”

She turned to face him and wrapped one hand over his shoulder and around his neck and traced his collarbone over his shirt with the other, “I did. But you,” she reached down and snatched the crumpled papers he realized too late had been sticking out of his pocket the entire time, “Promised you’d get your work done first.” She shoved the papers in his face.

He pressed her closer with the hand that was behind her back and used the other to pull the papers away from her and drop them on the floor. “But it’s  _ so _ boring working without you!” She was trying to glare at him, but he could tell she was fighting a smile. He twisted them around and sat her on the table. “Is it really so terrible that I’d rather spend time with my amazing,” he started at her collar and began to pepper kisses up her neck as he spoke, “brilliant, talented,  _ beautiful _ betrothed than do all the ridiculous paperwork Eamon makes up for me?”

“Alistair! Being King involves a lot of ridiculous paperwork!” He decided he didn’t like where she was taking the conversation, so he kept kissing her neck just below her jaw and started running his fingers along her ribs. He felt her breathing begin to hitch. “Alistair, that’s not  _ fair _ ! You know I’m ticklish! St-stop that!”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” She was laughing too hard for it to just be from his fingers.

“I’ll stop if you agree to have dinner with me.”

“Alistair, this work is im-important!”

“Well, then you can help me with it while we eat.”

She was laughing so hard she could only get one word out at a time. “You should learn to do it yourself! What if you need to do it and I’m not around?” 

“That’s easy.” He stopped tickling her and lifted his head so he could look at her face. Her hair was slightly disheveled, he must have been grabbing it and not realized again. The flush on her cheeks was making her almost glow as the candlelight danced across her face. “You’re just always going to be around. I’ll make that the first thing I do when I’m King. Make a law that says ‘My amazing wife Amelia always has to be around to help me.’”

She shook her head but had stopped trying to pretend not to smile, “Well, I can think of a few flaws in that plan, the first being you’ll be King for almost three months before I’ll be your wife.”

“Okay, so I’ll make the law the  _ second _ thing I’ll do and then the  _ first _ thing will be to move up the wedding. See why I need you to help me? I completely forgot about that. Now,” he tried to coax the errant strands of her wavy chestnut brown hair back to where they’d been before he’d gotten to them as he watched it shine as it reflected the light. “Do you agree to have dinner with me or do I need to keep tickling you into submission?”

“I-” she rolled her eyes but reached out to caress his cheeks and pull him to her for a soft kiss. “ _ Fine _ , I’ll have dinner with you. But you’ve got to finish that work! And keep your hands to yourself while we’re eating!”

“Can I have dessert?”

“No!”

He pulled her hands away from his cheeks so he could nibble on her ear.

“...maybe. But I mean it about the work!”

“Anything you say, love.” He let go of her hands and reached out to untie the bow on her bodice as he leaned into her to push her down on the table.

“You call this keeping your hands to yourself?” The candlelight was reflecting a faint glow on her cheeks again.

“No. But you’re not going to be eating yet. You’re going to make me do work during dinner so I’m starting with dessert.”

She laughed as he unlaced her dress. He couldn’t wait to see where else she might glow in the scintillating light.


End file.
